Judge Thomas Oakley slowed the car as he crossed Martin Luther Key Street on St. Catherine where it turned into Jefferson. He often slowed down here, in passing the King's Tavern Lounge—although he'd never gotten up the gumption to go in there. It was too close to home and he was too well known. When he wanted that scene, he didn't go anywhere here in Natchez. There were some private men's clubs up in Vicksburg where he could scratch that itch.
He wasn't slowing down outside the King's Tavern Lounge today to see what trade was out and prancing about but because he couldn't quite figure out where in town that boutique, Claire's, was that Peggy Ann had dropped hints about. He was at a total loss about what to get his wife for her birthday that was coming up in less than a week. There wasn't anything that he knew of that she might want that she didn't buy for herself—with a vengeance—holding over his head what she suspected and what had sent them into separate bedrooms five years earlier.
The judge was still a young man, though. He had needs. And he had preferences too. It wasn't really his fault that they were inconvenient preferences for a sleepy Southern town like Natchez, Mississippi.
He pulled the Lincoln Town Car over to the curb while he rummaged around in his wallet for an address for the Claire's place. He assumed they had a list for him of things Peggy Ann wanted—or else she wouldn't have wasted all that time dropping hints about the place to him.
It was a hot day, and the air conditioner in the Town Car needed Freon. It put out cold air well enough once it got going, but it took a long time to kick in, and he'd left the car out on the hot asphalt. So, he'd rolled the windows down when he'd started off for town.
"Anything I can do for you, mister?"
Judge Oakley looked up smartly, surprised at the interruption and by the smooth, insinuating voice. He looked over to the passenger side of the car and saw a young man, his elbows almost inside, and his head, with its mop of blond hair, filling the space where the open window was.
"Excuse me?"
"Anything you might want?" the young man repeated. He had a knowing smile plastered on his face.
How could he possibly know? Judge Oakley wondered. He'd never known them to come right out on the street and proposition someone just passing through. But then he realized that he wasn't really "just passing through." He'd pulled over to the curb right outside the tavern. And he had his window rolled down.
"No, of course not," he replied, his voice full of "what do you take me for?" huff.
"Nice lookin' car," the young man said. "And you look buff too," he added. He retained that smile, and the way he was hanging in the car, it seemed like he was going to take up residence.
"I . . . I . . . I just pulled over to get my bearings. I'm down here buying a birthday present for my wife." It was the first thing he could think of—something defensive to put him in an entirely different world from his young man. This young man with his handsome, ready smile and that endearing mop of blond hair. And soft, milky blue eyes. He couldn't be more than nineteen.
"I thought you looked like, you know, you'd like some company," the young man persisted. "Look like you might want to buy a present for yourself. If there's anything you're interested in—"
Judge Oakley put a right fast end to that, though. He hit the passenger window button, and the young man barely had time to move out of the way of that and step back before Oakley pulled back out into traffic—to the sound of the horn of a woman in a car that had been on the road coming up behind him and had to slam on her brakes.
The judge dipped his head almost as if he feared she'd recognize him and get the wrong impression of what he was doing at the curb outside a gay bar with a fine-looking young man hanging in his window.
He muttered to himself as he drove on. He was shaking badly, upset by the encounter. But also aroused by it, his mind going lickety-split over the conversation that had transpired between him and the young man—and then racing on to the implications. Followed by the possibilities. It had been nearly two months since his court schedule had allowed him to travel up to Vicksburg.
In two more streets, he turned left and then left again on E. Franklin. He was driving on autopilot. Two more lefts and he found himself turning off of MLK onto Jefferson again. And driving slowly past the tavern a second time.
The blond smiled and waved to him.
Judge snapped his head away and applied pressure on the gas pedal. He was almost to the Mississippi River when he managed to pull over to the curb again to get control of his shakes. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow. He sat there for a couple of minutes, thinking, and then he took out his cell phone and made a call to the police department down in Sibley, a small town to the south of Natchez, where he was restoring an old plantation house on the Mississippi.
* * * *
The door on the Sibley police department—just a one-man operation, really—was locked when Judge Oakley arrived there later in the evening. That didn't stop him from getting in, though. He had a key. Judge Oakley was probably the most important person who had settled in Sibley since before the War of Northern Aggression, and he held the key to any business or government building he was interested in in the small, dying town.
And he'd made a point to make really, really good friends with the town's one policeman, Dooley Lumpkin. Part of how he had ingratiated himself so well with Dooley was that he usually took Dooley with him when he made his trips to Vicksburg.
It was this special relationship with Dooley that had prompted Judge Oakley to call him in Sibley rather than the Natchez city police.
Oakley looked up and down the sidewalk before letting himself in the jail's door. No one was out and about, though, which didn't surprise him a bit. He closed and locked the door behind him. And then he just followed the sounds.
